International Trade Committee on Feb. 5th, 2020

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Does the government have a requirement to consult Parliament at least three months before beginning negotiations?

[Steve Verheul]

I can assure you that if we were to engage in any negotiations with a non-market economy under the obligations of this agreement such as they are, we would certainly be providing Canadians and Canadian parliamentarians with all of that information long before we'd provide it to the U.S.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

There's no legal requirement to do that.

[Steve Verheul]

There would be no question that it would be provided to Canadians first.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

However, there is no legal requirement to do that. Is that correct?

[Steve Verheul]

It's not set out in the same terms, because the terms of this provision are very specific, but I can assure you that we would be—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

These terms are legally binding. Is that correct?

[Steve Verheul]

These terms are legally binding in international—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

However, there are no legally binding terms requiring similar disclosure to Parliament.

Am I wrong? What would be the name of the act that imposes that obligation on the government?

[Steve Verheul]

I'm not aware of any specific act—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Me neither.

[Steve Verheul]

—but there would not be any scenario that I could imagine where we would give any foreign country our obligations in an agreement, or the results from an agreement to a foreign country, in advance of giving them to Canadians, including to Canadian parliamentarians.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Would it make sense to have similar legal provisions ensuring that the information is delivered to Parliament and to Canadians at the same time or prior to delivering it to a foreign government?

[Steve Verheul]

Well, it's certainly not for us to say whether there needs to be a legal obligation or not. The only assurance I can give is that we would not be providing anything to a foreign entity prior to providing it to Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Kram for five minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today and for all of your good work in the negotiation process.

My question is about supply management. I had a meeting this morning with representatives from SaskMilk, and there seemed to be some confusion about the tariffs that will be imposed if Canadian milk exports exceed a certain threshold.

I wonder if you could clarify this. Are the export tariffs that Canadian dairy producers have to pay only for exports to the United States and Mexico, or for exports to the rest of the world?

[Aaron Fowler]

The provision that you're talking about, which applies to three specific dairy products that are set out in the agreement, covers Canada's exports of those products to all countries.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Is there a similar requirement under the old NAFTA?

[Aaron Fowler]

There is not.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Are there similar requirements in the trans-Pacific partnership, the trade deal with the European Union, or any other free trade agreement Canada has ever entered?

[Aaron Fowler]

I am aware of no similar provision in any of our other trade agreements.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I am wondering whether the negotiating team could give us some insight into how that particular requirement made it into the new NAFTA.

[Aaron Fowler]

Certainly.

The provisions affecting the dairy sector in Canada are designed to respond to specific interests and concerns expressed by the United States during the course of the negotiations. In particular, the United States expressed to us repeatedly throughout the negotiations concerns with respect to the market impact of dairy pricing changes. These changes had been introduced in Canada in February 2017 as part of the proposed national dairy ingredients strategy whereby we established in Canada a new class of dairy products called class 7 that had a competitive pricing link to international reference prices to, among other things, encourage investment in the dairy processing sector in Canada and to allow the sector to produce more innovative products. The United States expressed concerns with respect to the impact that this change had, in the first instance, on the access into the Canadian market of certain types of dairy products, and then with respect to the possibility that Canadian exports of certain types of products that benefited from that new pricing class were displacing exports of American products from markets that the U.S. had traditionally exported to.

We examined a number of ways of addressing those U.S. concerns through the course of the negotiations and ultimately determined that this was the least objectionable way forward.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I also have some questions about the environmental standards that came up a little bit earlier in these meetings. Indeed, earlier this week and last week in the House of Commons, some Liberal members made the statement that we do not want to have a race to the bottom when it comes to environmental standards.

Have the United States and Mexico ratified the Paris Agreement?

[Steve Verheul]

Well, I'm sure you are aware that the U.S. has not ratified the Paris Agreement. Offhand.... Mexico has ratified the Paris Agreement.